Posts tagged ‘Design’

You might have seen architectural designer Greg Toon from Potential etc… tackle readers’problem homes in his regular column for The Sunday Times Home section. Well, now he has joined Zoopla to help you sell your home. Every month, one home seller will win a free design scheme from Greg and it will be featured here for all prospective buyers to see.

To be in with a chance of winning a design scheme by Greg Toon, please send a link to your property that you are selling on Zoopla to website editor myra.butterworth@zpg.co.uk.

Greg Toon has 18 years experience in the architecture business, working in London practices on residential and commercial projects. His extensive experience includes designing everything from warehouse conversions and hi-end offices, to restaurants, social housing and millionaires’ mansions.

In 2012, he moved out of London with his family and set up Potential etc… after renovating their tired looking 1960s home. The before and after photos below show the transformation of the house that many of his friends thought he was mad to buy.

Realising that some people find it hard to look beyond dodgy wallpaper or awkward room layouts, Greg created a unique service, providing design schemes for sellers – instant make-overs in the form of artistic perspective sketches and proposed floor plans – to illustrate their property’s potential and help them to sell it.

The concept is that buyers are investing in the vision for the home rather than just the property as it stands. By doing this, the property is opened up to a wider audience. Properties with Greg’s design schemes have sold faster and for more money, something that no lick of paint or expensive kitchen refit can guarantee.

A. A typical artistic sketch and proposed floorplan showing Greg’s design for a reconfigured kitchen area, now providing a family kitchen, dining and courtyard within a side return

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Every living room needs a cool sofa in the middle of it. It’s a communication of just how stylish you really are – ideally you want a statement piece of furniture that nods to current design trends but is still comfy. The sofa is one of our most valuable items of furniture in the house, after all – it’s our reward for a hard day’s work and the bliss of sinking into it while watching a good box set is unparalleled.

According to interior designers, it’s all about colourful sofas these days. The brown leather pub sofa or the neutral shaded one is no longer desirable – these days it’s all about bright red, pinks and turquoises. For those that can afford it, wool-covered settees – particularly merino wool – is highly fashionable, as are those covered in tweeds, tartans and checks.

Made by Hands of Britain is selling a retro grey wool-coloured sofa designed to look like it’s floating for £1,700 (madebyhandsofbritain.com).

Sofa beds, according to Richard Ward, a designer at Wawa – a shop selling designer sofas from in east London’s fashionable Columbia Road- are increasingly popular. “They are more in demand than ever as people tend not to be moving house but concentrating on making the most of existing spaces,” he says. He is selling an ottoman sofa-bed for £1,845 (plus fabric cost) via wawa.co.uk.

Ward has also designed a bright red or purple ‘bay’ sofa or sofa bed, to fit snugly into the curved bay window of a house. “It is the best use of an often neglected space,” he says. The price is £1,845 (and fabric) for the sofa and £2,245 for the sofa bed.

L Shape sofas also make the most of decreasing living spaces and can mean that two people can lie down comfortably on one sofa, without one person having to make the sacrifice of sitting up.

A note of caution from Leigh Harmer, managing director of loveyourhomeforless.com, however, who advises homeowners not to get carried away. ‘Savvy consumers in the market for cool sofas are careful in what they are choosing, as too cutting edge will date and most of us need value for money these days. The trend is for contemporary lines that do not shout design – sofas that will mix with many interior styles. What you want is a settee that, as mood and trends change, will still look great in three years’ time.”

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If so, listen up, because the conservation body that looks after Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Fallingwater has come up with a crafty way to get the windows replaced: sell the old ones off to architectural relic hunters.

Their website explains that the old windows are suffering from decay (hmmm, wonder if all that falling water is to blame – the owner’s father dubbed the place ‘rising mildew’?).

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

And this, architecture groupies, is where you come in:

“Naming opportunities range from $500 to $10,000 and up for each window, skylight, glass door, or set of windows, depending on the size and location.

“You will receive a commemorative piece of the old Fallingwater glass, framed along with a drawing of the house, specifying the window that you have endowed.

“Additionally, if you endow a window at $1,000 or more, you will be recognized on a donor wall in the Fallingwater Visitors Pavilion.”

Okay, so we admit that the fuchsia hue and celestial winged pattern might not be to everyone’s taste.

And it doesn’t look like the most comfortable piece of furniture ever made although it’d probably do your posture the world of good.

But given that its designer was Laurence Llewelyn–Bowen, the foppish, long-haired fellow from Changing Rooms, maybe we should just be grateful that it doesn’t come in a garish shade of purple.

Flamboyant Laurence, who was responsible for some of the most outlandish makeovers seen on the TV series – and the ensuing anguish – seems to have left controversy behind with this nifty idea which demonstrates how recycling and design can work together.

Even better, come next year when vivid pink thrones will be soooo last year, the chair can be melted down and used to create something completely new. Clever, huh?

Laurence’s recycled chair will be auctioned off later in the year with all proceeds going to charity.